agriculture

Found this email to myself, buried in an inbox. Not let’s see where it grows…

Essentially, you might say there are three options: planting good seeds, planting bad seeds, or planting no seeds

we can choose to plant no seeds as we go through our lives—relying completely on good fortune to always befall us

Humans were not agriculturally structured, this is one of the several intermingling reasons why we’ve needed to technologize ourselves so heavily. We’ve had to develop methods to keep track of loads of data that we can’t possibly store effectively in our brains. This leads me to my next point, which is that if we are to sow seeds that are negative, that are meant to harm other organic life forms, particularly humans but all others would be included, well there’s a very good chance we will forget we even sowed that seed. Whether it’s a physical seeding or some idea or plot line we’ve put forth as an act of subterfuge, unless we are highly trained in managing and data tracking our negative efforts, they are likely to end up numbering we ourselves as the victims. Our proximity to them because of their initiation already puts us in danger, and our primitive (as a compliment) brains are not meant for such nonsense besides.

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“Naming the things that are absent breaks the spell of things that are”
-Paul Valery

I felt pretty low when I first thought this—given my love for youthful innocence—but perhaps this will make me (and you) feel less horrified when seeing in the nature ¿we? love so much, the young being targeted and killed by a predator. As much as I get mad at the predator, I get mad at the parent (while simultaneously empathizing with the parent, and the previously hungry predator). However, in the larger picture that evolution provides us enmeshed in the daily struggle of our animal beings, there is a clarity to the deaths of innocent babies. Not all babies are killed, just the ones that have parents that have the unfortunate nature/nurture combination that puts them in places of bad, unprotective parenting. Perhaps the parents had too many babies to tend to, and the predator is nature’s way of stepping in and not allowing that particular “over-population gene” from over-populating through a plethora of children, weakened by the initial lack of resources because of too many mouths to feed. Perhaps the parent(s) are ostracized to the outer ring of a large herd because of some anti-social quality that they possess. This anti-social quality that would be passed down to their children by both nature/nurture channels, is now reduced or extinguished through the death of their young by a predator (or a disease, a less thought of predator).

I guess I am just trying to find some meaning in the death of those who I feel shouldn’t die, without myself resorting to some higher authority that has schemes of his own. My authority is the immanent vital universal force, of which I am just one (or several) of countless important parts. What I can’t stand for is the death of young people that aren’t being cycled into the food chain, but are done in by non-organic violence, like that of a metallic bullet or an un-evolved disease that has no place in the larger eco-system.

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Title: Of Canadian Migration

There’s a niche exploited by migrating this far north for enterprising birds who can manage the long annual commute. So too there is a niche for hibernating animals that can be extremely resourceful during the lengthy winters as well as during the waking seasons.

Humans are not internally resourceful, which has made them grasp at many many outside resources to survive these harsher environments. Their lack of foresight to survive such environments as far from the equator (and from warming climatic factors) as Canada will lead to an eventual depletion of resources. Also, possessions, including land ownership, are not marks of human freedom, but signs of bondage to a particular place that one feels a loyalty to. A loyalty to a land for whatever constructed reasons means that a person cannot be fully loyal to their own bodily needs. Humans are “digging in” and may see it as patriotic loyalty, when really it is a ditch that blinds them from seeing the horizon.

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Title: Some examples of the antithetical relations between cars and people

Speed bumps: good for people because they keep them from getting hit, but bad for the cars—suspension damage, brakes being worn, loss of momentum (gas efficiency).

Accidents: Older cars from the ’60s used to fair pretty well in accidents when they were made of more metal, but people in the accidents were a lot more likely to be seriously injured or killed because of the extra jostling. Now as people are supposedly safer in their cars (minus the fact that there are more cars causing higher likelihood of all types of accidents), the cars are taking more of the brunt as they are built to be breakable and absorb a lot more of the impact, and so the cars are more likely totaled than the people.

Increasing Automation of Cars? :As the cars become more sophisticated supposedly, there will be even worse cerebral damage as people get dumber and more aloof about spatial awareness, which will be having serious implications if it couldn’t be argued that it already has.

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Title: Old Bones Taking a Break: Ageism and The Origins of Civilization

Among one band of nomadic humans approximately 11,000 years ago, the eldest—venerated for their wisdom—had the wily thought of retirement. Such a desire coincided—or indeed was influenced by—a beautiful place that they had happened upon and that they decided was good enough to suit their needs until the end of their days. They broke the bond of eternal renewal through migration and settled in a fertile place where their devoted children and grand children stayed by their side, knowing more and more the life of a sedentary species. The privileged position went to that of the eldest who made subjects out of their own children, treating them as means to their own ends.

These people problem solved as issues arose due to this new sedentary lifestyle, and they put down vegetative roots mirroring that of their new agricultural staples. Humans playing at trees begin to overshadow the forests; we transition from valuing the living inner bark as a source of food, to valuing the dead inner wood as a source of shelter. Perversions abound over the next several thousand years, and now we know nature, and think of it as other to ourselves.

The role that metals play in desertification could possibly be analyzed to be twofold, though more or fewer actual reasons may exist beyond the scope of the author. The first role is what has been mentioned in many places already in this essay, namely that metals in motion reduce organisms’ ability to be as dynamically involved in the environment, which might be a definition for a desert. To flesh this out a little more, consider how a lot of wind erosion on a mountain top keeps trees from growing there, but so too it could be said that a lot of trees growing there could keep down the wind erosion. Either way, the degree to which there is the homogenous motion of larger, less subtle forces—a constant drying western gale force wind that acts as one large rigid force as opposed to a light humid breeze that dances between trees in no particular direction—is the degree to which smaller more complex developments is precluded. Along with the great currents of air that are eroding subtle areas that used to be rich with plant and fungal biomass, so too are greater currents of ocean water playing a role in eroding oceanic life, especially at the coasts where it used to be the greatest. To give a galactic example: think of a galaxy where planets large asteroids, planets, and even stars are constantly colliding and causing large violent impacts whereby thermal dynamic changes are undergoing huge changes in the local contexts; these large bodies gathering elemental matter and making it act roughly uniform (think of a giant gaseous planet with little chemical complexity) will give no chance to allowing any life to endure, whether carbon based or any other type. The celestial bodies interacting are themselves, perhaps, the lifeforms; however, it is a big waste of the smaller potentials within them: the variety of chemical elements from which they have pulled by gravity into strict enslavement could make such a richer tapestry, just as a one building with LEGO blocks can make something far more interesting than one can with DUPLO blocks.

The second role that liberated metals play in contributing to desertification is the way their temperature fluctuations mimic that of a desert. Metals heat quickly with exposure to a thermal energy source, but also cool quickly when that energy source is removed (think of a pan being heated by a flame). This is the same process as goes on in a desert, whereby the sun’s thermal energy warms it during the day, but then when the sun sets the desert becomes very cool very quickly. Our particular earthly forms of life, at least, do best when under a relatively constant thermodynamic heat. This regularized temperature that our life needs is emblematic of the modalities of a life force: harmonization occurring through a common interactive vibrational level. The violent swings in temperature prevent life from spreading those deepening complex bonds because harmony is constantly being shattered/interrupted. Large concentrations of metals at the crustal surface are sure to exacerbate these swings in temperature, and so too will continue to diminish the global biomass which is so critical in regulating temperatures to foster additional layers of life.

Notes:

LThis publication is a footnote to a larger piece I’ve been compiling, “The Liberation Of Metals” and I thought it could stand on it’s own as a post. The upcoming ”’Liberation of Metals is about the role of the large quantities of metals we’ve introduced to our crustal surface, and how these metals are destroying organic connectivity, of which this note published here was an important facet that I struggled to fit within the linear narrative stricture. There’s even more I would’ve liked to publish in here about the ramifications of human simplifying/analytic interactions with our environment, that leads to such destructions as those wrought by industrial mono-crop farming methods. There are so many other things that we engage in that I probably am so normalized to that I don’t see. We are employing such an effort to average everything into a uniformity where the peaks and valleys of vital life are smoothed into a digital conformity. The “treatment” of emotions is another such example, where the dips and dives, highs and aspirations of a mood wave are sought to be controlled, averaged out, to a constant state of looking at things from a cool distance. We are estranged from our own bodily functionings by a rolling pin of pills. The blandness of eroding cannot be tasted for the taste buds are included in the wasting away…

I often live under a rock (a fertile place, see below*) with the Cascadian Independence Movement just entering my narrow radar screen. After some investigation, however, it seems the movement itself also dances between rock-roofed dormancy and active assertions of the human striving for freedom from unnecessary shackles. There are many humans in social media circles that give off revolutionary vibes, standing atop the rock as one would a soapbox, exuding that something big politically will be happening very soon; who am I to cast doubt and preclude such a future? I have a taste for their revolutionary energy, and all I wanted to do when I first realized this was a real movement within the American continent I occupy—where the political imagination is generally as fluid as a desert—was go hug the nearest conifer and have someone take a me and tree selfie, and photoshop that onto a Cascadia flag with the words “Solidarity With Cascadia”.

The Cascadian nation’s coming into existence is important beyond just those that it will include (I wouldn’t say “contain”, as that has a statist connotation and I think Cascadia is far more a free and open nation), as it could serve as both a model for emerging nations and a further disintegration of the overgrown, malnourished, obese post-imperialist empire euphemistically labeled “the United States”. Cascadia is another front against the sprawling Empire to help take it further off balance; another stronghold of a mountainous island to not be drowned out when the real threat to it’s residents—the one to its east (District of Columbia) not west—topples from within. Cascadia has a deep enough of a foundation in place that it cannot be faulted as being a mere reaction to the politically and economically decadent times. Cascadia is full of insight and foresight that put it in a different league of nations than most that have arisen in the last century; it will prove to be a one word poem, prompting other nations to arise before such a possibility is precluded. Cascadia is yearned for by the people within, not a convenience contrived by people without!

A blogpost on Cascadia could go into many different tributaries that wouldn’t lend itself to the linear writing style here employed, so I will return to the rock metaphor, as a matter of course. On this theme, the vanguard revolutionaries need to be prepared psychologically and not lose their far-sighted visions, when another winter comes and they need to migrate back underground to warm and nourishing places. Their thrusting efforts to birth a new sovereign nation may likely be averaged-out and watered-down by their spermicidal, prudish, conservative “let’s stay put” neighbors that don’t have the same lust for an open-ended Cascadian future. However, I have a sense that the number of winters between their hopes of an unoccupied Cascadia nation and its reality, are quickly thinning. The most important reason for this is the revolutionary zeitgeist: Cascadian pride is a phenomenon that might be comparable to a vine spiraling upwards, clinging to a cliff-side at times, but only to return and reveal more of its glorious self higher up, daringly exposed and awe-inspiring. The vine has deep roots that I cannot appreciate, that are larger and more fertile than Ecotopia even understood, though that book was immensely important in its current growth strides. For me, I am gazing up at the vine, rooting it on. I see more hope for it still because what might be the most important inhibition barring the Cascadian nation from bearing its first fruit (a fir cone baby) is a negative that may soon be negated. The Cascadia nation’s biggest natural predator averred to above—the United States, along with its global reserve currency status—is going to be having organ failures of all sorts that will put it in a hospital bed before too long. In such a state the federal government might become too impaired to grasp at a fledgling nation. One must wonder if FEMA’s imminent deployment in response to the fault line is a pretext for federal presence, “reminding” residents that they are not free to self-determine. In any event, at some point this governmental force will release the Cascadian land from its grip, enabling the people to put on full display the beautiful ideas informing their struggles.

Change before the Crisis: “Get ahead of the times with silver ParaDimes”. One triage tactic the region can take up (if it hasn’t already begun to do so) to further ensure it isn’t as injured by any American economic collapse, would be the encouragement of converting dollars into physical silver and bartering with it for trade. This transition to a silver backed currency will allow a more seamless transition when the need arises, as well as becoming another social glue between the Cascadian people. Even more to the revolutionary side of things would be a continued push for an organic economic method of sharing and mutual aid, which I know already exists locally in many different places over Cascadia where people are even further ahead of their times.

*I admittedly couldn’t figure a way to put in this further elaboration without further confusing the text, so I thought I would say it here. With regards to living in proximity of a rock: there is much bio-activity that happens during all seasons, as permaculture profounder Sepp Holzer has displayed in his “symphonies of nature”. A man ahead of his time is surely not unheard of in a place that is ahead of it’s time, and those familiar with his love of rocks would know that they regulate temperature, increase moisture to dry areas, clean and mineralize water, among many other talents known and unknown such as creating an appropriate pH for a fir tree sapling to grow strong and tall!

A core principle of conduct embraced by many anarchists is the notion ofdirect action—humans engaging directly in political or social acts without seeking recourse through a diluted, indirect pathway. Indirect actions could be categorized as those commonplace processes most of us partake in daily in modern industrial society, where we employ cadres of “middle men” to get our needs met, even at the expense of living in an alienated and hierarchical world.

Where and how we get our food is a realm fertile for direct action that has far too often been overlooked, and the more human efforts are put directly into getting our food in nature—something an anarcho-primitivist strives for—the less need and the less desire we will have to separate ourselves from the natural processes by using modern machinery and agriculture techniques that keep us out of the loop, ultimately keeping nature out of the loop too. Permaculture offers the surest bridges to allow humanity to cross from a concrete and machine besieged existence back into a thriving symbiotic connection to the rest of the living world. The paradeisos—the plentiful, self-perpetuating lush groves of our dreams—can be realized as actual places that we can stumble upon for a filling meal in our recapturing of the nomadic way of life. Our nomadic sensibilities are not irretrievably lost, but we may need to piece together a different game trail to migrate forward, back in time.

Seven Billion Nomads?

An anarcho-primitivist professing the wonders (and wanders) of a nomadic lifestyle might from time to time encounter a stickler who responds: “but there wouldn’t be enough food to support the seven billion humans; do you really think we should allow a mass die-off?” This is an uncomfortable corner for such an anarchist to be painted into—especially if it’s by other anarchists—and it’s a corner where (mental) starvation will eventually occur and a primitivist may quit on the fertile, migratory utopia. Permaculture heroically shines light into the dark forest, growing multifarious roots out of such a trap, the wise path being a generally “zone 4” approach.

It would take far too long, in terms of human lives (and billions of human deaths), to wait for the succession of the modern monocultured forests back to the dynamic, efficient, high yielding places of yesteryear. Anyways, it’s doubtful the succession would privilege human’s food needs, i.e. humans, nor the bottleneck of species they have domesticated for food, could have had the evolutionary time or pressure to be fully equipped with all the appropriate digestive enzymes to enter into a diverse ecosystem and gain nourishment from thousands of different plants. The zone 5 mentality of letting nature do it’s thing must be dropped, and the zone 4 mentality of changing nature in analogous ways to fit human needs must be adopted. Here is a non-exhaustive list of permaculture ideas that primitivists can become familiar with and possibly implement in even a “guerilla gardening” fashion, depending on their accesses to land:

– Since forests are such masters of the hydrologic cycle, turning non-forested land—such as grasslands, deserts, and abused agriculture lands—into diverse food forests would prove the most immediately beneficial for producing a surge in available biomass fit for human consumption.

– Start figuring out foods that can be wildcrafted, “eating the weeds”, and introducing them to the palates of others as well as your own; once someone realizes they can eat lettuces growing wild in the forest, their lenses are changed and they start considering what else they can eat (bark? berries? bugs?).

– Sabotaging trees that are low in what they provide the ecosystem, and favoring and seeding trees that are much more beneficial to human needs and the ecosystem as a whole; this is especially relevant to ourmonocultured foreststhat are daily wasting the energy potential granted from the sun.

– I had other ideas when I conceived of this post, but they are currently unavailable; when they occur to me, I will edit them in.

I was looking at crowds of people in the park, making the best of a colder than ideal sunday, and couldn’t help but think about how ephemeral and dependent this whole situation was on fossil fuels. Rightly so, most people were being in the moment, but many of the preceding moments (decades and centuries) contained lots of “ungrounded” activities focused on combing the earth for more and more stores of natural resources, the current rage being fossil fuels, most especially oil.

Oil is how we drive, but because of the amount of oil being used to grow our food and in some cases heat our homes, it is how we walk. The oil can be traced in our bodies and blood, and is energizing (or enervating) our motion. As far as oil in food, we have “cleaner” petroleum free options, and for meat we too have organic as well as grass fed, but what is the grass fed itself? In so many industrial and residential practices, grass is fed petrol chemicals as if its been thirsty for millions of years when nature sans humans wasn’t providing it. What percentage of all of our bodies is petroleum byproduct? I have taken on a fairly strict paleo-ketogenic (bulletproof-esque) diet for the past few months, but I don’t delude myself into thinking that I am close to petrol free.

So, back to the picture above, we can say that the people themselves wouldn’t be the same if petroleum wasn’t a part of our world. Certainly the dress would be different, more earthly perhaps (definitely no nylon), and they would on average be substantially healthier, despite whatever petroleum dependent medical advances might have to offer.

Would there be less people, in this colder climate, if fossil fuels weren’t there to support their needs? There would certainly be fewer people if there was a reversion to agriculture as it was practiced in the pre-industrial revolution era, with its obviously poor understanding of how to produce the lushest high quantity and quality yield on a given piece of land… permaculture excels at considering the needs of the land to be the most versatile and productive. If these permaculture principles were the mainstay of our agricultural practices (and we were “oil sans”, opposed to Canada), the densely populated state of New Jersey could be as populated or even moreso, with a lot more (meaningful) employment, and less commuting across the Hudson River to the hollow “shelled out” city of New York.